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Yoga is a movement practice that has many physical and mental health benefits including reduced low back pain, increased levels of particular neurotransmitters, and greater resilience to stress. While all the science behind yoga’s benefits is valuable, in general, most people come back to their practice because they simply feel better with yoga in their lives.

This movement experience, which often begins as a physical exploration, also has the potential to evolve into a living daily practice. Themes like reacting less and responding more, building awareness, employing compassion, suiting up and showing up, cultivating empowerment, courage and gratitude are all explored on the mat, but also have a potent impact on our lives off the mat.

Quite the contrary: when Arguetty is asked about strategies for overcoming challenges on the path to self-improvement in his capacity as manager of UW Recreation’s Mindfulness Program, he replies that first acknowledging, then embracing the universe’s disposition towards disarray can be a key step in centering oneself on the path to success.

These days, mindfulness is a word we see used everywhere from college campuses and large corporations to the military and on social media, yet in spite of its widespread usage (or, perhaps, because of it) many people still carry misconceptions and false cultural associations that might impede them from fully accessing the benefits of mindfulness practices.

We live in a world of high expectations. It often seems like there’s an unspoken requirement to constantly stay at the top of our game at work, at home, and anywhere else we frequent during our weekly routine. With this pressure, many are attempting to do too much with the decidedly finite amount of time and physical and mental energy they have at their disposal.

One of my favorite aspects of yoga is that it provides me with a way to step back, contemplate, and track whether the choices I am making off the mat are life-enhancing or life-detracting.

One of the most impactful awareness on the mat has been how I sometimes use outdated stories or beliefs about my body to influence my practice, and how much can shift when I engage my postures from a place of present moment intention. The same is also true in my interactions with others.

I went to a yoga class with mom the other day called “Yoga Therapy.” It was a sweet experience of many basic movements, but what I appreciated even more was the very very slow pace of the practice.

In our fast moving culture, even much of yoga has jumped onto the bandwagon of high speed. Slowing down in my body was so soothing, it built ample heat, and it brought so much increased awareness to various parts of my physical structure.

WARNING: If you are very uncomfortable with, or offended by, the conversation of sex, touch, and the physical body DO NOT READ FURTHER.

One of the gifts of practicing yoga is that it has made my senses more refined and awakened. While this provides a ton of benefit on the mat as I notice my body and can adjust in postures with greater awareness, it also has added to my experiences off the mat as well.

Part of this added sensitivity is coupled with a desire to know more and wondering how and why certain things function they way they do.

Yoga is a an extremely potent practice to support mood stability, stress relief and reduction, and improving overall wellbeing, but sometimes more is needed to bolster our internal experience.

Depression is something that runs in my family so I have had plenty of experience with down days. If you’ve ever been extremely blue, you know the struggle. Feeling helpless, powerless, unmotivated, stuck, frustrated, sad, alone, and wondering when it will end.

One of my favorite aspects of the practice of yoga is that it invites me to create boundary within the postures. I can use my engaged muscles in different postures in different ways to generate a strong boundary in one place for the sake of creating a greater opening somewhere else.

While I find this process simple on the mat, when I encounter a situation that requires saying no off-the-mat, things become a bit more interesting.

Last night I got home after a very full and sweet day: teaching yoga in the morning, a stroll through the farmer’s market with a friend, a tasty lunch starring spectacular veggies from the market, a nap, a catch up conversation with an out of town friend, taking a yoga class, yummy home cooked dinner, and a shower to rejuvenate and complete my day.

When I get on my mat, I love that often it is in the company of others in a class setting. But even when I practice alone, I always have my block, tie, blanket, and eye pillow to fully support the experience of my practice.

Whenever I gather these items I am always reminded that I don’t have to do everything alone, and that my practice on and off the mat is enriched when I call upon my support team.

One of the perils of being involved in training yoga teachers, coupled with the fact of being a Virgo, is that I notice everything as I take a class. While there is a wide range of diversity and belief in how a yoga class can be guided, there are also elemental base skills which are either present or sometimes missing from a teacher’s repertoire.

I am grateful that my yoga education has been informed by many diverse traditions which are all open to more than one way of seeing the world. When I get on my mat, this background gives me permission to move in more than one way, feel more than one feeling, and celebrate the multifaceted experience of practice and day-to-day living. But is this the case for everyone?

When I step onto my mat usually my intention is to ground, calm, and connect to my body through movement and breath. I love the intent and focus that comes along with the practice of yoga, but there are times when even my practice becomes way too serious...

One of the reasons I love the practice of yoga is how it has taught me to welcome every flavor of emotion and feeling on my path.

In one class I remember wanting to stab the teacher after she was guiding all of us to sustain Goddess/Horse Pose for what seemed like an eternity. I felt angry, even though she weaved in permission for us to release the posture whenever we wanted.

While I was leading yoga teacher training last week, I was browsing through my notes and came across one of my favorite metaphors presented by one of my teachers, Dinabandhu Sarley.

The basic idea is that most people live their lives at the brightness of a 40 watt lightbulb — don’t worry it’s LED and very eco-friendly — but those who are living yoga are able to amp up from 40 to 4000 watts. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

The physical practice of yoga has been a potent gift which has expanded my body awareness beyond my original expectations. What I do on the mat is a reflection of how I live the rest of my life, and vivid metaphors from the yoga tradition always help me better understand my process and journey.

When I carve out time during my week to get on my mat and practice, it often feels like a breath of fresh air. Even 30 minutes of coordinated movement and breath help me feel clearer and more energized.

Yet, often the mounting to-dos start to get in the way and instead of taking care of myself, I dive into taking care of everything and everyone else.

Have you ever had that blissful moment when you look around your organized and clean living space in great celebration, and then a few hours later or the next morning you wonder how the hell chaos and mess returned so quickly?

What if you found out that it isn’t out of the ordinary at all, and in fact it’s the core of how the universe is designed to function?